Low Life
by thermodynamic
Summary: Tim isn't going to make crashing with the Curtises a habit.


I've always been a sucker for Darry and Tim having a relationship... and though the Outsiders TV show really isn't much to write home about, it has a few resonant storylines, and that one inspired me. This is a bit of a spiritual successor to _In Loco Parentis_, fair warning. Also, big warning for domestic abuse, that's what this centers around, though mostly its psychological effects.

* * *

These dumbasses don't ever lock their front door, like they're living in Beverly Hills and not the wrong part of Tulsa, but for once he's glad instead of scornful when he stumbles inside. He's far from his turf, too loaded to care until he reached the border between the east side and the south; if he hadn't shown up here, he would've had to crash on the softest patch of concrete he could find. _They don't want one of us to get hacked off and end up robbin' a bank or somethin', _Dallas had told him with a bratty, pointed eyeroll; _you ain't that man's fucking son, you're just a way for him to feel like he's redeemed himself, _he was tempted to say, but didn't have the nerve. No one tangles with Dally Winston until they've really got nothing left to lose.

Their house still has a woman's touch to it, though the only woman here for the past six months is Darry's kid sister; a God Bless This Home doormat, embroidered roses on the tablecloth, china shit and glassware that's just collecting dust everywhere. They've still got a normal couch, though, and Tim collapses onto it and pinches the bridge of his nose. _You're okay, _he tries to tell himself, he inherited the self-delusion from his mama. _It's okay now, he ain't about to find you all the way over here, is he, you'll spend the night and he'll have sobered up by the morning, no one's even gonna notice you—_

He's just thrown a nicotine-reeking afghan over himself— _Dallas sure made that woman sound like Mother Teresa and Joan of Arc's love child, guess he was mistaken_— when Darry comes out of his room and down the hall, flicking on the light in the kitchen as he steps inside. He considers, for a brief and stupid moment, playing possum and pretending he isn't there, but he's not five years old anymore and hiding under the bed while Mami and Papi throw plates at each other; he's a grown ass man, he's got enough dignity left not to skulk in the shadows. "Hey, _vato_," he says as Darry sticks a glass under the tap. "It cool if I crash here tonight?"

"Tim?" He doesn't drop the glass, but it's a near thing, and some water sloshes over the rim. "What are _you_ doin' here?"

They first met when he was nine and Darry was eleven, and the only reason they ever became friends was because their daddies sold in the same crew; Darry was older, and already part of a clique of middle class and Soc kids who played peewee football, while Tim was one of those little assholes getting paddled in the principal's office every week and showing off his switchblade at recess. Then Tim's hugged a bullet to the chest and Darry's went inside and they were all each other had— pushed grass together, smacked around West Siders, sipped light beers with Luis and Alberto and talked about how they'd tear this town up once they were old enough. He still can't reconcile that version of him with the quarterback wearing stolen polo shirts and chinos, paying rapt attention in A-level classes, and maybe Darry never managed either.

_Hell you playin' at? _Tim had demanded, grabbing him by the collar and slamming him against the porcelain lip of the bathroom sink, first day of his freshman year. _You think 'cause you got blue eyes, you're gonna pass all of a sudden? I got 'em too. But the second one of them scopes what your old man looks like, you're finished._

Darry had tilted his head back and spat at him, half of his face illuminated bright from sunlight streaming through the window; anyone else, he would've slammed his skull into the dirty mirror, but instead he'd just stared transfixed at his reflection, at the trickle coming down his cheekbone. _You ain't shit, you never been shit, grease. _Then he'd given Tim a hard shove and walked out of that bathroom, out of his life. They wouldn't talk again for close to four years.

Soda had hero-worshipped him once, always bugged them when he was over and Mrs. C was at work, tried to tag along on their jobs and rumbles and trips out with _tios_. That's probably why he let him slam his face into the dirt and take that goddamn watch back. That was probably why Darry had hated him.

"Look, can I just—" He tries to run his hand through his hair and catches on a patch that's matted with blood, cusses as it comes back crimson and sticky. "I need somewhere to stay, I can't go home. I'll be outta here in the morning."

Darry crosses his arms. He looks like his daddy, except his daddy always had a soft spot for him, wanted Tim to be one of his little lost boys even after he robbed his wife blind. "Why didn't you hit up your uncles' place? It's closer to your territory."

He blushes hot enough that his cheeks are probably crimson. "I can't show up there lookin' like this." Maybe they'll be sympathetic, or maybe they'll decide this is his gringa mother coming out in him, the weakness he wishes he could drain from his blood and just leave the parts his dead daddy gave him. Eighteen years old and he's still getting the shit beaten out of him by her husband, still too sentimental and too pathetic to walk away. He can hear Luis's drawl now— _compa, you can't defend yourself against some middle-aged fool stumblin' over his own feet, and you think you got what it takes to run a whole-ass gang?_

It'd been a while since Ed last managed to beat on him; he got complacent and sloppy enough to forget that the possibility ever existed, like Dallas taunting a cop and looking surprised when he earns a crack to the mouth. He doesn't hit Angela much at all, she's a combination of his pet and his maid, and Curly, white-looking, easy-to-smile Curly, he could charm the scales off a snake— and for months after he moved back in, he was on his best behavior too, bringing home flowers and whistling Elvis songs like when he first showed up at their breakfast table. Only when he managed to slam his head through a wall did Tim remember the first time he'd called him a dirty little spic.

It doesn't hurt, he repeats like a mantra, he got numb to it ages ago, it never hurt period, just made him a man— and then a hot film of tears stings his eyes, blurring his vision, and he about dies all over again from humiliation. He thought he'd long since forgotten how to cry.

Darry hasn't said anything, not for an embarrassingly long few moments. Darry knows, better than Dallas, better than even his best friend Rafa; he'd cried into his shoulder once when he was thirteen, after Ed had laid into them so bad the neighbors called the fuzz and he hadn't dared run over to his uncles and their practiced indifference. "It ain't me, man," he finally says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his flannel pajama pants, "it's the state— they been crawlin' up my ass lately 'cause Dad was a dealer, makin' sure we ain't in contact with anyone he used to sell with, that we're on the straight and narrow. It won't look good for my case if they find you here, okay, they got one helluva vendetta against your whole family. We ain't supposed to associate with criminals, it's like we're reportin' to the parole board."

He'd called them _tios_, once. Smoked the grass they grew in their shower. Let Luis wrap an arm around his shoulder, tell him that he was becoming a chip off the old block, that he was more like a brother to Darrel than a son. How quickly he forgot everything he owed them, following his daddy's lead. "I ain't fixin' to move in with a duffel bag," Tim says with a harsh laugh, "relax, Superman, your nice clean Christian place ain't boutta be infected that long." He sounds like Dallas, has the same pissy attitude that he laughs at him for and tries to smack out of Curly, but, well— he figures everyone's entitled to the odd unreasonable freakout every now and then, and after getting slammed into a bannister, he especially figures he can be excused for it. "Shit, I'll be gone before the sun comes up, if you're so pressed."

Darry pushes his lips together, looks just like his WASP mama did, like there was perpetually shit under her nose— Tim wonders if she ever called her kids _redskin _after a few too many drinks_, _maybe the dark Curtis girl, the way his own mama learned to weaponize _spic_ from the men she brought home. "You expect me to feel sorry for you— man, you hate that house more than anything, and now you're legal and you're still sharin' a room with your kid brother? I don't _get_ you. If you really wanted out, you could've left years ago, and instead you're—"

"Don't you fucking pretend your candy ass can understand any of the choices I had to make, or I'm fixin' to take this outside in a minute." He gives the carpet a vicious kick and fantasizes about planting his fist into Darry's jaw, imagines that might force them to confront half a decade's resentment and suspicion, though he's old enough to know that violence produces as many problems as it solves. Spoiled little— "You think you got it _so _bad, huh, postponing that college education so your siblings don't have to live in group homes— your daddy ever put your head through a wall with your mama watching, that ever somethin' that happened in this cute lil' shotgun house? No? Then keep your mouth shut."

_Your mama ever just stand there, drink in hand, and tell you that you had it coming?_

_"_How 'bout _your_ siblings, you wanna talk about them?" When his back's against the wall, Darry retaliates hard and dirty; a muscle in the side of his jaw twitches, he holds his glass like he'll smash it over his head. "You pretend they're your whole world, they're the only thing you actually care about, but you ain't gonna do shit for them except run interference, will you? You won't get them outta there, that might cramp your style."

_"_It ain't that fucking _simple." _He clenches his fists, intentionally keeps them pressed against the sides of his thighs, to steady himself before he flies off the handle. "They're _kids, _Jesus Christ, if Ma wanted to make noise with the fuzz she could drag them right back home— and Curly, he's the old lady's favorite, he'll never leave her behind to deal with Ed alone. It don't work like that."

_She's got their documents, all of them— I don't even know where she's stashed their birth certificates or social security numbers. I sure as shit don't know I could raise them better than her, especially with how much of a_ salvaje _Angela is becoming_._ Sometimes I lie awake at night and stare at the ceiling and think about how much I've put her through since I was ten or eleven, calling her Mary Magdalene behind her back, getting locked up and dragging Curly along on half my jobs and laughing my ass off when Luis slapped her face or slammed her into the kitchen counter, and I swear maybe I deserve everything I got and then some. _

Darrel Curtis, he'd curled his lip and judged Luis for not taking them in after their daddy died, or at least Tim, the reject kid no one had wanted and had only kept around as a punching bag. Tim can't, not now that he's approaching twenty-two more rapidly than he likes to admit and thinks about Luis back then, grieving and hooked on smack and trying to wrangle a gang he was far too young to lead. He wonders how his siblings will judge him, his decisions, once they're grown. He hopes they'll show him some mercy.

"… I'm sorry," Darry says, and Tim can tell it's not a phrase that leaves his mouth often; the shameless always manage to recognize each other. He's got a real unhealthy look around him lately, his skin sallow like yogurt gone bad, his cheeks bloated away from the rest of his sunken face, his big football player muscles shriveling down into the bone; it's not Tim's business to call him out on it, but he's grown up around enough drunks to clock one automatically. _Like father, like son. _"It ain't my— you can spend the night, God, it's fine. I'm bein' a real asshole, huh?"

"You just forgot you ain't Boy of the Year anymore," Tim says, and he could say it more kindly. He rests the right side of his head against one of the lumpy throw pillows on the couch, presses his toes into its equally lumpy arm; his brain pounds against the side of his skull like it's a hammer made of exposed nerve endings, and there's nausea rising up his throat and swimming around near the base, he'll be lucky if he doesn't have another concussion. "It's fine. If I was crowned Prom King too, I dunno how my big head would fit through the door."

Darry lets out a strange, jerky sort of laugh, but it's a laugh all the same, and for a glorious second they're in junior high again, drafting maps in lead pencil of the best places to sell. Then he looks at the grandfather clock tick-tick-ticking in the living room and his whole face sags again. "It's two in the mornin', goddamn." He shakes his head out a little, like that'll clear it. "I gotta get up on the roof before eight. Get most of the work done before the sun's too hot."

Tim doesn't have to get up for 'work' before he damn well wants to, goes unspoken, Tim's job is a little more freelance than that and mostly happens under cover of darkness. He tries to imagine going clean and working on some roof like Darry does all day, sweating and shaking under the Oklahoma sun in summer to scrape whatever buck the boss man feels like giving an Indian kid, and thinks maybe dodging bullets in the back streets isn't always the worst deal. "Go back to bed." The effort of getting the words out is suddenly crushing, makes him want to roll over and vomit onto the carpet. "I'm fine, _ese_, get some sleep. Don't need you to tuck me in."

Darry isn't his mama or even his daddy, he doesn't come over to pat his head before scooting back down the hall, but he gives him a long look, lingering at the edge of the living room. Tim flips him the ol' one-finger salute. "_Git_." When he's finally gone and his bedroom door shuts, Tim waits a few more seconds and swings his legs onto the floor.

Tim doesn't like to drink. Reminds him too much of his mama, lying on the couch and telling him to shut them kids the hell up already, fetch her an aspirin while he's at it— he never bought her 'migraines' for a minute. Doesn't so much like being out of control either, looking a goddamn fool in front of his boys, willing to throw hands with any jackass who blinks at him wrong the way Dallas does. Dallas gets to be reckless because he's a real island unto himself, doesn't have people relying on him or respecting him or asking shit from him, just lives in one long burst of sensation. If Tim lets anything slip, one fucking _thing_, the last illusion that he can handle his own shit evaporates like dew in the morning.

But tonight the left side of his skull hurts, and he's squatting in the house of a guy who'd once thought he could save him and his son, who he'd once considered as much his brother as Curly— the darkness of their living room shrouds his shame. He knows Darrel Curtis never locked his liquor cabinet any more than he did his front door, and never would've let it go empty, no matter how many AA chips he managed to collect before he died. The whiskey bottle is heavy in his hand, sloshes around, burns astringent like disinfectant in his throat as he pours it down.

Let that man do him one last favor. Let him finally sleep, just for one night. Let him rest.


End file.
